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Thursday, July 24, 2014

Scientists say it may be too late to effectively combat climate
change deniers and that humanity may simply have to learn to live with
their negative effects.

In
a worrying development that could have dire implications for the health
of the planet, a report published Wednesday by the Environmental
Protection Agency suggests that the number of climate change skeptics
could reach catastrophic levels by the year 2020.

According to the
agency’s findings, the rising quantity and concentration of individuals
who willfully deny or downplay the ruinous impact of the ongoing
climate crisis will no longer be manageable by the end of the decade,
leading to disastrous consequences for global ecosystems that may well
prove irreversible.

“In recent decades, we have observed an
alarming increase in people who refuse to acknowledge the reality of
global warming, which has exceeded even our worst-case projections,”
said EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, confirming a worldwide spike in
the number of deniers who are actively seeking to discredit the
scientific consensus that human activity is responsible for climate
change.

“If this trend continues at its current rate, we will pass a
critical threshold of unfounded skepticism within the next six years
that will have devastating repercussions on every continent and in every
ocean, threatening the entire global population.”

“For the
continued survival of Earth’s plant, animal, and, indeed, human life,
that kind of runaway ignorance is a frightening prospect and one that we
can no longer afford to discount,” she continued. “If we don’t contain
climate change skeptics soon, we’re putting the very planet at risk.”

Since
the latter half of the 20th century, the EPA noted that more and more
regions, biomes, and even human commercial and industrial activities
have suffered the harmful effects of individuals who refuse to accept
that the ongoing rise in global surface temperatures is due to
greenhouse gas emissions.

Specifically, the report revealed an alarming
upsurge in the number of authors of discredited scientific studies
questioning the reality of climate change, adversarial cable news show
guests who scoff at the notion that humans can affect Earth’s weather
patterns, and politicians whose opinions are controlled by fossil fuel
company lobbying groups, all of whose increased presence in the world
jeopardizes the planet’s vulnerable biosphere.

Additionally, the
report noted a shocking jump in the number of uninformed citizens among
the public at large, whose widespread dissemination of misleading data,
half-truths, and outright lies regarding climate trends has already
facilitated the destruction of numerous natural resources and hundreds
of species, while putting still others at imminent risk.

“The fact
that the very existence of global warming somehow remains a topic of
contention demonstrates that the density of these skeptics has spiraled
out of control,” McCarthy said, citing data from the report showing that
the concentration of the most ardent deniers recently reached a
previously unheard-of 1,500 people per million.

“While the U.S. remains
the planet’s largest producer of climate change skeptics, countries
halfway around the world are suffering environmental destruction from
the actions of these people who refuse to acknowledge the threat of
extreme weather conditions and rising sea levels. The effects of these
outspoken deniers are truly global in scope.”

While the EPA report
recognized that past efforts to reverse the proliferation of climate
change deniers failed to stem the spread of their erroneous beliefs, it
suggested that renewed education initiatives and well-informed public
debate could at least limit the emergence of the most destructive and
stubborn individuals who continue to dispute a conclusion supported by
97 percent of scientists.

However, with the rise of such
individuals having only accelerated over time, the report’s authors
conceded that it may no longer be possible to eliminate this devastating
man-made phenomenon.

“The profusion of these skeptics was
something that we as a nation should have made a better effort to get a
handle on in the past,” said report co-author Gena Orlofsky, noting that
the increase in private sector groups actively seeking to cast doubt on
the reality of declining biodiversity and the melting of the polar ice
caps was observable as early as the 1990s.

“At this point, so much
pseudoscience and misinformation have been released into the world that
we simply have to accept that those who refuse to ‘believe’ in objective
scientific fact aren’t going away. All we can do is attempt to minimize
their impact on our planet.”

“It’s a terrible shame. There was a
time when I hoped we would be able to reverse this trend and return our
understanding of the consequences of our actions to normal levels,” she
continued. “But frankly, it appears to be far too late now.”